TDI Seeks Owners of Unclaimed $7M

The Texas Department of Insurance is searching for 33,000 Texans, each of whom has a $209.50 check coming as his or her piece of a small insurance company that failed in 1992. The checks total approximately $7 million.

People who were policyholders of Members Mutual Insurance Co. of Farmers Branch on or after Jan. 1, 1991, and have not received their checks should call TDI at 1-800-578-4677. Callers will be asked to verify their identities to make sure they are Members Mutual customers entitled to one of the unclaimed checks. The company’s special deputy receiver (SDR) initially mailed checks early in 2002. Members Mutual specialized in providing insurance for credit union members. A state district court judge in Austin placed the company in receivership in Sept. 1992.

As a mutual insurance company, Members Mutual had no stockholders but was owned by its policyholders. After all of the defunct company’s claims and debts were paid, $13.8 million in company assets remained for distribution to the policyholder/owners. This is the biggest distribution on record from a Texas receivership of an insolvent mutual insurance company.

The SDR cut and mailed checks last year to 66,000 people whose names and addresses were in Members Mutual’s policyholder records. But about half of the checks were returned by the postal service because of addresses that no longer were valid.

TDI has used Internet searches and other means to locate the owners of the checks that the postal service returned to the SDR.